A retired couple's adventures of building a custom home

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Odds and Ends and Delays Already

Delay is the enemy of progress. ~Eliot Spitzer

Bill talked with the well driller (Scott) last night to confirm what time they would be drilling on Monday. Scott told him his truck was broke and they were trying to fix it, but he will not be able to drill on Monday. 😦 Unless there is a miracle repair today, we will have to reschedule the date until later in April. I asked Bill if he was sure Scott wasn’t playing an April Fool’s joke on him. He said, “No!” 🙄

Here are a few odds and ends:

A follower asked the square footage of the new house. Answer: Just under 2200 sq. ft. Contrary to what most people think, we did not downsize. 😯 Our present home is a little under 1700 sq ft. Everyone always thinks it’s larger when they get in here since it is a tri-level. If you notice on any of the floor plans I’ve shared, the new house will definitely be a one-story home. No stairs for these old bodies! 🙂

I signed up for Social Security on Tuesday this week. Knock on wood, so far my experience has gone a lot smoother than Bill’s. It started out a little rocky, but ended up okay. I had made an appointment for Tuesday at 9:00 am. I was told it would be a phone appointment and I would not need to go to the SS office. Worked for me. However, by 10:00 Tuesday, I had not received a phone call. I actually thought my phone wasn’t working, so I called the national SS phone number. They said someone would call me before 3:00 pm that day. Around noon I got a call from the downtown SS office with an apology that the office I was assigned to was short-handed that morning and no one had called me. It was all good and I was able to get all signed up. I should get my first check in April.

Regarding dental/vision insurance – After we had decided to not buy a dental and vision insurance or discount plan, Bill continued to search on the Internet. He found something about a discount plan that Delta Dental had for residents in certain states (Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio). For $80/year fee for a whole family, we could save an average of 20-40% on dental services, receive discounts on hearing care, and vision care. The cheapest discount plan we had looked at earlier was almost $600/year premium for both of us and they didn’t provide hearing with their plans. The deal on any of these discount plans is that you go to one of the participating doctors/services. We decided this would work for us and we enrolled. The $80 fee will pay for itself after one of us gets a cleaning. Thank you, Bill, for finding this. Thought I’d post about this in case others want to look into it. Here is the link: Delta Dental Direct of Indiana.

I forgot to share the kitchen cabinet scare we had last weekend. Bill had finished building the refrigerator cabinet and only had the cabinet to go above the refrigerator left to build. He decided to line up all the cabinets to mimic how they would look in our new kitchen so we could make sure everything was correct before he started building doors and drawers for the them.

When you look at the pictures below, note that Bill rested the small upper upper cabinets on top of the base cabinets and then the upper cabinets on top of them. Actually, the upper 36 inch wall cabinets will be mounted about 18 inches above the countertop, which is standard. And the upper upper 12 inch wall cabinets will be mounted above the upper cabinets. I wanted the cabinets to go up to the ceiling. There will be a 4-1/2 to 6 inch moulding to reach the ceiling – similar to Jill’s cabinets, but Bill is also adding a crown moulding. Obviously, I will never be able to reach those upper upper cabinets. The plan is to put LED lights in them and display something (not sure what yet) in each of them.

Is this kitchen set-up right?

Hmmmm. Is this right?

Somethings wrong with this

Here’s the funny (and scary) thing. When Bill invited me out to the pole barn Saturday afternoon to see the cabinets, I got so excited seeing them set up that I NEVER noticed that the set-up was all wrong! And, obviously, Bill thought they were right or he wouldn’t have set them up that way either. 😳

Bill decided to leave the cabinets set up so Jill and Jim could see them when they arrived later that day. Fast forward several hours and the four of us go back out to the pole barn. Bill, Jill and I were talking about what was going to be in each cabinet and then all of sudden I said, “Wait, this isn’t right! There is supposed to be a drawer cabinet on each side of the cooktop cabinet.” Like this:

Cabinet Set-up

Bill said, “No, I have it just like you printed out from the software.” He grabs the paper and looks at it and then sheepishly said, “Oops, I’ve got it wrong. I’ve got that base blind corner cabinet next to the cooktop cabinet.” We all just looked at each other in shock. Then, Jill says to me, “Mom, how didn’t you see this was wrong earlier today?” I started laughing and said, “I don’t know!” Then, I said to everyone, “How in the heck are we going to build a house if neither one of us got this right?”

Jill and Bill start talking about moving the cabinets to their correct positions and whether the corner cabinets were wrong AGAIN and Bill would have to remake them. I was sick for him. Really, I had a pit in my stomach. I didn’t want him to have to remake those cabinets. That meant he would have made them three times! Bill and Jill are two of a kind. They both have that engineer brain and can visualize things flipped and in order and how things connect. All those things that my mind cannot do. I walked away from the cabinets and started talking with Jim. Bill and Jill finally figured that Bill had to remake those corner cabinets again. 😦

Oh, this gets even better . . . Fast forward to the next morning. Jim had brought us those large professional print-outs of our house plans. Bill and I were the only ones up in the early morning. I’m looking through the house plans and realize that the way Bill had arranged those cabinets in the pole barn the day before didn’t match the house plans. When we flipped the house, the long run of cabinets with the cooktop was along the wrong wall. I get my cellphone and look at the photos I took of the cabinet set-up. The cabinet layout was supposed to look like this:

The correct cabinet layout

I quickly tell Bill about my findings. He comes over and looks at the house plans and looks at the photos. He said, “Well, maybe I did make the cabinets correct but lined them up wrong. Maybe I don’t have to make them over!” Now, I was even more worried about us building this house. 🙂 While the rest of us went to the Children’s Museum for the day, Bill stayed home and set-up the cabinets the correct way in the pole barn.

4 thoughts on “Odds and Ends and Delays Already”

Paula, Wonderful! Our dentist is not on the plan. However, since we knew we were going to have to go with a new dentist after we moved, we decided we would just go to the dentist down the street from us who is on the plan. And, my present eye doctor is on this plan, so that was a win-win for us. Glad I shared the info! Bill’s new mantra is, “We are now on a fixed income and we have to find ways to save.” 🙂